


Don’t Go Challenging Gods

by pingnova (WarriorLoverInc)



Series: Lost Moments [3]
Category: Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Alcohol, Alternate Norse Religion & Lore, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Anachronistic, Animals, Bees, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Corpses, Cultural Differences, Death Rituals, Deities, F/M, Fire, Food, Ghosts, Historical Fantasy, Historical Inaccuracy, Injury, Knitting, Mythology - Freeform, Parent Death, Possession, Precognition, Suicide, Swordfighting, Travel, Violence, Weather, Zombies, mention of drowning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 21:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1663820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarriorLoverInc/pseuds/pingnova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First the rain stopped. Soon, he followed. Then he was stuck. The Queen of Honey and Stars offered help with one condition: he had to bring her the last Harja.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don’t Go Challenging Gods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [candycornsodypop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candycornsodypop/gifts).



> If you're really interested in where this is set historically―it's Migration Era, about 8th century, a vague place in a horribly bastardized fictional version of Scandinavia. Also find this fic on [Tumblr](http://pingnova.tumblr.com/post/88891440846/dont-go-challenging-gods-1).

The bloodless war on the mountain started simply. It didn't seem as though great tragedy would be wrought in such a way, but as any people would, they believed the best. It was all they had left.

Trade was a recent invention, still wobbling and shy. Other clans and peoples were wary of foreign goods and looks. Eventually they warmed up to the luxuries it promised. Novelties migrated, ideas shared. Alliances could be seen beyond months of walking. All because of some nice things, some shiny rocks, a particularly sturdy blade.

Their mountain had little to offer and much to demand, this they knew. The slopes were barren of vegetation and the animals were hardy and sly. In return they were hardier and slyer. Shelter was rocks and fires were careful. There was little wood.

They did not war as other peoples did, for no one desired their place. Energy was spent gathering food and shelter and as always, believing the best. Their gods were distant, but kind. Never were they alone in struggle.

Sock was a child of a certain make. There was no discernible interest in their recent discovery of the mountain's harvest. Despite their best efforts to impress upon him how valuable gleaming little rocks were to their survival, he would take the hunting party any day, and every day, and every night and morning and afternoon... He would make his own hunting parties.

Certainly he had skill, a sort of sloppy determination to prove and please. It was like nothing they knew, there was a period of doubt about the fidelity of his mother, but in the end it was decided. They had a champion.

Their tribe had no use for a champion. They did not war.

He was allowed certain respects and welcomes within the village. He was, afterall, their first and only champion. Sock did not care so much for formalities and rites. It was lonely, his pedestal. Uncrowded by memories of past champions, too lofty for friends, high enough that it was out of sight and out of mind for a majority of his people. They were friendly, of course, and appreciative of the duty he served them, which was chiefly helping the Hilmir with sacrifices and hunting the slopes mercilessly. They liked him enough.

But he could smell the fear. The animal fear.

He was foreign. He did not join the parties chipping away at the mountain, he did not weave baskets in the village, he did not join the other children in games. He wanted to hunt, he craved the sensation, and they approved, they encouraged, but they released a stiff breath once he was gone.

They did not war, but he was proof it existed.  

There were whispers of men from the sea, in large ships, with plants and gear unlike anything on this earth. They were gruff, but their trade was rich and desired. The stones that gleamed once polished were their appetite. These were the partners the mountain people needed.

Direct contact never happened. Sock enjoyed the champion's privilege to see their party off and welcome the representatives of the gruff men to their mountain. The representatives lived at the junction of the wood and moor and sea, a collision of nature's might. They were lowlanders, considered beneath his people, but respectful and willing to trade necessities for rocks.

It was from them that his parents purchased a blade, upon which they personally engraved his name and status. The seax was single-edged, as long as his admittedly short forearms, and equipped with a small stone of their own, a yellow starburst, placed in the grip. They were proud, their people were thriving, it was the best.

The representatives gradually requested the mountain people make the trip all the way to their own home, the collision of nature. His people muttered and obliged. It was only them that they could do business with.

Sock received lessons from their blademaster and nearly every adult male in the village when they had the chance. They might be of animal fear, but each man wanted to impress upon their champion. He humored them and grumbled at night. Put him in a hunting party again, that's where he felt free.

He experienced an odd thrill with the war blades, those meant to rend men apart. Lessons with them were scarce and ended far too quickly.

"This training is just to be thorough. You won't need these," said the blademaster. "We don't war."

Sock wondered at his gut desire to make raw guts. The blademaster spoke true, they didn't war. But he knew he wanted to tear into a man regardless.

Suddenly he understood their animal fear.

Two months and a party meant to be gone two fortnights had not returned. They were anxious and deprived. The rain had ceased. They relied on the trade to bring them sustenance and reassurance of more.

Dust rose under their plodding steps, whisked off the slopes. Sock reached towards the wind, entwined fingers with it, watched the grains fly. It toyed with his hair, with his hat. It was his friend, the only thing on his pedestal. Thin air. He imagined it giggle and gasp with him. He made it sing with his blade. He didn't want to see its guts. It wasn't of animal fear.

A cloud rose from the path up the slope. People gathered and helped a man into their midst. Sock dropped the air. It stilled with the breath of the village. The man was of the trading party two months missing, he was alone. He brought tragic news.

"They're all gone," he gasped. "Slain."

"Who dared?" demanded the Hilmir.

"The representatives. For the gold and the jewels. They declared they were tired of bargaining and took it all with bloodshed."

Ties had been brutally cut. Trade was over. They believed the best. Belief was all they had now.

There was no speaking, even the mourning was silent. Dust muffled the wind and their breath. It swept them into a cloud. Already they were disappearing.

So happened Sock's accident. It was the lovingly engraved seax in his grip and the pounding in his ears and the life on his hands and then his name and title nestled deep in his flesh where they belonged. He sat up from his body with his head in his hands. He swore he heard the wind speak.

“You need to see the Queen of Honey and Stars.”

So he did.

Her human skin was a quaint facade. Earthy brown speckled with flakes of silver that shone cold and white like she was alight with galaxies from within. Amber eyes dripped molten pits of honey, sticky and unsettling in their intensity, the ring of her corneas burning sweet volcanic tar. Flowers twisted like snakes through her lilac hair, vines grew along the strands and tempted them into a loose tail at the crown of her head. Her arms drowned in the sleeves of a mossy lambskin jacket, from which emerged a spidersilk skirt and a pair of legs adorned in messy orange-white knitteds, bunched at her bare ankles. Dust covered toes kneaded the dirt, nails ragged and grained as wood. Bees nestled in her flowers, fuzzy yellow dots buzzing and bobbing to a tune all their own. In one hand she clutched a green twig, the end gleaming with honey. Starlight flickered across it when she swung it in gesture.

“What is a shade doing in my courts? Death is not welcome here.”

Sock bobbed nervously in the air as the ambient buzzing intensified. While he might no longer have flesh, he didn't want to take chances with a goddess.

“Uh, your majesty,” he tried, observing her impassive reaction. “I was told you could help me.”

He prepared to elaborate on his situation, but with her quick glance from his head to his toes it was clear she already knew.

“You wander between the realms, unable to cross into the Blaze Glade or Lunar Vale. It's the only reason you would come to me. The only reason you are still here. Shades do not belong among the living."

She chewed the end of her twig with disinterest. It was an old fireside story; an improper burial dooming the remnants of a good man to suffer eternity denied the promise of afterlife.

“You remain only by the tethers of your own vessel. Were you not immolated?”

Sock clutched an elbow. “I dunno. It was just us out there. I wouldn’t be surprised if our bodies were never found.”

The Queen of Honey and Stars hummed and hawed around the twig, crouching in the dirt with offhand thought. A star shot across her skin and died away as she came to a decision.

“Fine. I will help you. If you can prove yourself.”

The stick jabbed at the center of his chest and for a moment his fingers crawled with a familiar sensation, verdant and green like her sacred forest. Bewildered, he flexed each finger experimentally as the life faded.

“And how might I do that, your majesty?”

“There is a man,” she began, twig dropping, eyes reflective pools of starlight, captivating. Fresh honey dripped from an eye, a tear sweet as angel’s breath. “Someone whose worth is never in question. He travels the paths of his ancestors with flocks and skeins along the outskirts of my land. Bring him here.”

“Might I ask why…?”

Moss murmured and stone snapped beneath her retreat into the shifting shadows. Bees deserted her crown, and from the privacy of speckled darkness she wiped her dripping eyes, reply cool as a brook.

“It is beyond your ken, shade.”

 

* * *

He searched the empty land kissing the forest edge. There was nothing, or so he thought. Eventually he came across a building, a longhouse, meant to shelter large families. The area was silent. There was no sign of life.

The longhouse’s door swung in the wind’s hand. Baskets were strewn rim down on the dirt floor, holes eaten in the sides. Wind whisked through the smoke hole in the ceiling and fresh ashes stirred in the fire pit, evidence of recent life now gone. Someone had recently been here, hopefully the someone he required.

A path of dust worn into the low foliage outside lead him to a wider path covered in fresh hoof marks. Quick floating brought him to a moving flock of sheep following the vague directions of a young shepherd.

She said he traveled the paths of his ancestors with flocks along the outskirts of her land. Was this him? Sock decided to take the plunge.

He followed alongside the shepherd and glanced sideways when there was no reaction. His human companion walked leisurely, with a slight hunch and occasional stumble. The gray tinge of his lips cast an unsettling aura around him, one that felt like injury. Perhaps there was something wrong.

"Uh, greetings," he tried.

His reply was a narrow glance and more silence.

"So you can see me. You must be the one I need."

The shepherd took a breath. They approached a small shack, walls of stones and a roof woven of branches. The flock scattered to graze on tufts of grass among the mud surrounding it. Severed stumps dotted the earth like honeycomb, one of which the shepherd kicked with a grimace before entering the shack. Out of common courtesy, Sock remained among the stumps and sheep, waiting for his return.

The wood was not far and the stumps told a story richer than an elder. Once this too had been a part of the wood. Now it was moor, low bushes and stringy grass. It sparked his curiosity, but even more he wondered why the shepherd had not returned.

He placed a tentative hand on the door and fell through.

The interior felt smaller than the exterior suggested. It was a single room, with a rough wooden cabinet pushed against one wall, a rumpled mattress against the other, and stacked pallets of wool and yarn and skins against another. In the center was a typical fire pit, embers burnt low, a flat stone beside for cooking and a place to set things. A clay dish of white cream and a pile of stained strips of cloth rested there. Beside that, a large seax, bloody.

"Excuse me?"

The shepherd continued to clean up, tossing dirty strips into the firepit and using the clean parts to wipe off his blade. When Sock only came closer with no response, he sighed and turned a bit.

"What?"

"Who are you?"

"You follow me all this way and enter my home without permission, but you don't know who I am?"

Sock shrugged.

"I'm Jonathan," he admitted with a wince.

"Jonathan...?"

"Harja. Jonathan Harja. You are?"

"Sock!" he was quick to inform. "Of the mountains. I'm here to collect you."

"Certainly," Jonathan mumbled.

He continued to clean the blade with only the wind and distant sheep as company. Sock leaned in to examined the seax. Unlike his, there was no engraving. It was by simple folk for simple use.

"What did you make bleed?"

Jonathan's movements slowed. "Just a threat to the sheep."

He didn't wish to speak of it.

"Thieves?"

"One could say that."

Sock crossed his arms with a petulant tilt. This was no fun. It was obvious his presence was unwelcome, but he hadn't contact with a man in what felt like ages. He glanced around the shack again as Jonathan finish with his seax and gathered up the dishes. It was placed far from the nearest village, which he had seen on a hill from the distance. There wasn't enough space or supplies for more than one person. Where was his clan?

"Why don't you live in the town? Out here is wild. Alone, you risk death."

“The townsfolk have no love for my family. We were the first to the land, the first to receive the Queen’s honors.” Dishes clacked as his hands clenched. “The only to receive them…”

He sighed, tossing the dishes into a basin by the door with little thought.

"Do take a seat, shade, for I suspect your purpose and I wish to share before it is carried out."

If he had known that the man he was to bring to the Queen of Honey and Stars was a lonely young shepherd he would have saved himself plenty of worry. Sock raised a finger and opened his mouth, but Jonathan had begun, words tainted with only a dash of bitterness.

“There were many of us once, all in pleasant harmony with the soil and the forest life. The land is gray now, but once her reign was vast and wild. We flourished under her blessing and became prominent craftsmen and cultivators and sometimes sailors. Tune the Stupid in particular made us known when he ran around claiming to regularly communicate with the dead.” Jonathan scoffed. “Every one of my kin can do so, he was just crazy enough to try to share it with normal folk.”

“Did they believe him?”

“Oh yes. Stoned him to death under a blood sun, ostracised our entire family. Even today when I visit town mothers usher little ones away and heedless boys try to pick fights.” A dry sigh full of frustration. “It’s not as though my family is a threat, with how many remain.”

“And how many now?”

“Now? There is only one.”

He set an empty saucer speculatively on the stone, eyes hard in the silence.

“Why are you here, shade?”

Sock frowned at Jonathan’s rigid shoulders. He moved stiff as a stale tree and jerked through his motions like an ornery old man trapped in festering recollection.

“The Queen of Honey and Stars will grant me help with passing from the earth, but only if I bring you to her.” There was no reaction to his words. Nervously, he threw a query into the silence. “Why does she request you?”

Calloused flesh shuffled to a stop, raising a brief kick of dust from the packed dirt floor. “I’ve known her since I was very young. We would entertain ourselves together in her courts, once upon a time.” He jerked his chin at the basket of colored yarns and pallet of supple lambskin, beside which lay a half-finished knitted tube, still clinging to its needles. “I uphold the tradition of thanks and leave her gifts.”

“Do you... _like_ her?”

“It’s not like that.” Jonathan looked away. “She has allowed my family to live wholly and peacefully within her domain for generations. It’s only right that I pay respect.”

“This is a little more than your average respect.” Sock said, inspecting a roll of yarn.

Jonathan shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s all I have to give.”

“She doesn’t demand sacrifice?”

“No. She doesn’t welcome death."

The shepherd shuffled through the cabinet, emerging with a long woolen cloak in hand. He rubbed the gray material between his fingers thoughtfully, gnawing a mutilated lip, then shrugged into it with a bleak laugh. He pulled the deep hood over his face, sardonic teeth gleaming from the darkness and eyes sharp on Sock.

“I dare say she enjoys the company of rock to even her kin the bees. It is one of few things within this realm that will not pass away. I shall go. Be my guide, shade, and we shall see the consummation of this ordeal with the Woman of the Wood.”

 

* * *

The wood was like a basket wall, woven of twigs and trunks and branches nearly impossible to pass through. No doubt many a blade had been destroyed attempting to hack a space inside. For Jonathan however, the wall morphed, and uncertain passages formed. Sock could float through regardless, but he knew this was a true welcome. He followed the silent lead of Jonathan.

Nothing had changed since Sock's first visit. Her court was a glade of knee-high grass, dotted with lush foliage bearing fruit that should be out of season, basking in warm sunlight uncharacteristic of the dry gloom outside. There was the buzz, like new life at the base of their skulls. It served to disorient, but Jonathan slogged through. Sock supposed if he was really so acquainted with the Queen he was used to it.

They stopped before her. She sat cross legged in the grass, stoic. The flow of honey from her eyes had ceased and now it was only a thin sheen at the base of her eyelids. She and Jonathan locked gazes. Sock took an awkward seat out of sight.

Neither spoke for awhile. Jonathan kicked at the grass as she stared intently at him. Finally she blinked and painted a slight smile across her face.

"You've grown up."

Jonathan nodded.

"My thanks for the gifts."

He nodded harder. "Thank you for the honey."

"Of course."

Sock popped his lips. The tension was thicker than any honey. Jonathan seemed glad of the distraction.

"Why have you called for me with this shade?"

She twirled her stick. "You're to help him cross over."

He shrugged. "A pyre? A burial? I am capable."

"I'm of the mountains," Sock reminded him.

"They have similar rites, but they are a great distance from my wood. You have the gift, you will help him."

"Of course." The shepherd shrugged again. "We will be off then. Thanks to you, my Lady."

A quick nod in place of a bow and Jonathan whisked away. Sock remained for a minute, shot the Queen a gaze of worry. She nodded kindly and a bee flew a loop around his head. Everything was taken care of.

Sock's bow was closer to a curtsey. Then he caught up with Jonathan.

They took to the village for supplies. As Jonathan had previously espoused, a wide circle followed him through crowds, distrustful looks pierced him from every side, and his bargaining was met with flat resistance. He managed some supplies: creams, soaps, charms, and more. Last of all he searched for rations. Despite the dead zone he created, he seemed to give it little thought and continued as if it was normal. It probably was. Sock hung a little closer.

The woman he haggled for rations was the most friendly person they had met yet, which said a lot. Her responses were grunts and significant glares and her prices were whittled as if stone with rotting wood. She seemed familiar with Jonathan. Though that familiarity wasn't a fond one, he had her attention today. He was offering his entire flock. Even Sock looked at him as though he was out of his head.

A man hovered at their peripheral. He wore a purple tunic familiar to Sock and an expression intent on Jonathan's dealings. Sock hovered around him while he hid, but the man gave away none of his thoughts. He was able to give Jonathan a little warning when the man began his approach. The shepherd spared the man only a glance and a sigh.

The stranger's opening words were telling.

“You are the mere lees of a once worthy people. Only you manage their lands and now you leave?”

Jonathan kept bargaining. The woman eased and he received a pouch.

"What is a Harja doing leaving the precious wood?"

“I'm traveling,” Jonathan relented, eyes narrow and unwelcoming.

“Oh? And to where, might I ask?”

“No place of importance.”

Jonathan wrapped up the transaction and weighed the pouch in his hand, nodding when he found it sufficient. To the shopkeep he gave assurance of how many were in his flock and to the man he gifted his most pleasant smile. It was terrifying.

“Good day to you, Svend.”

“It’s Chief! Hilmir!” the man called after them as they departed.

“He’s not any chief of mine.” Jonathan mumbled some asides to Sock about egos and dragged his feet in the dust. “His head might as well be a swollen squash.”

They passed out of the village and onto a well worn path through the scrubland. The recent dry spell encouraged an onslaught of dusty gusts and Sock was for once glad to be incorporeal as he watched Jonathan squint and pull his shirt over his nose. Sunlight was a vague suggestion. A gray film of clouds stretched across the sky, dormant, holding the rain back. Jagged shapes cut across the lowland horizon. The mountains. From their vantage point on the village’s hill he could see their path peter out into the brush. From there it was skill and luck to find their way across.

“Have you ever been to the mountains before, Jonathan? I know the way if not.”

Jonathan huffed a put-upon sigh behind the cloth of his shirt. “I haven’t. It would be best if you disregard thoughts of leading me off cliffs.”

Sock grinned. “That will be difficult.”

“You’ll be trapped here forever if I die before you burn.” Jonathan hunched under his cloak and adjusted his knapsack. “There’s a long way to go. Let’s begin.”

Sock popped ahead of him, raring to go, but spun to a halt when another voice joined them, almost completely drowned out by Jonathan’s disgusted groan. It was the Hilmir again. He puffed to a halt in front of Jonathan, extending a waterskin with the cheery air of a wife sending her son off to battle.

“For your travels, Lady Luck’s drink.”

Jonathan snatched it out of his hand with a suspicious glare. “My thanks.”

“It is the least I can do for the last of your kin.”

Sock patted the air near Jonathan’s shoulder in place of actually pushing him. They needed to be off. Jonathan sighed and pushed the skin under his arm, turning without so much as a farewell. The Hilmir raised a boot and sent Jonathan tumbling down the hill. At the bottom he wheezed in the dirt as Svend chuckled back into the village.

“If I do not perish, he best watch when he sleeps,” Jonathan growled, finding his feet again.

"I know a thing or two about killing and sleep," Sock offered.

"I've no need of the help from the likes of you. Just show me the way and let's be done with this."

They walked until gray light became dark and then found a place away from the path to bed. The air stilled around Sock as he watched Jonathan sleep against a trunk, just a pale suggestion of a human face receded into his thick cloak. It served more functions than he had first assumed, for it was coarse outside like moss and water-resistant, a caution for a miracle shower. Inside was a thin layer of plush wool. The clasp holding the neck closed was a polished wooden bee.

Sock had to wonder what exactly the Queen wanted of this boy. Both seemed more familiar than they would admit. He knew that if he persisted with his teasing conjectures Jonathan would tell eventually. It had worked so far. He also knew that it wasn't his place, but that hadn't stopped him before.

Quiet, unwelcoming, and level-headed, Jonathan didn't make himself very attractive to potential companions. But he was used to being alone. Perhaps he preferred it. He moved at his own pace and let nothing steal his composure. Like a tortoise. Sock snickered in the quiet.

The lowland moors took their time with Sock and Jonathan. Despite being acquainted with their trickery, Sock still lead them in circles for a few days once they left the well-trod path and stumbled their way through thin animal trails and trader marks. Jonathan forced halts enough times to annoy even Sock and called one day of travel off to dry heave. He decided in the night that he was well enough to begin again and grumbled an apology from the depths of his hood.

Entertainment was nonexistient, so Sock did with what he had, which was chiefly Jonathan. He spoke extensively about the mountains and reminded Jonathan that he'd find the trip rewarding. There were rocks and rocks and more rocks, but his living companion didn't seem to be aware of the difference between them or that there were any of note beside those he constantly tripped over.

It was a shame that he was a simple shepherd, Sock said, because someone of higher standing would understand what made a reflective rock precious.

Jonathan grunted and chewed on a ration. He wasn't concerned with stones.

A herd of lumbering aurochs marked the beginning of the second week. Jonathan halted as they swung their horned heads and turned around, employing his seax to hack his way through the brush in a path around them so as not to be stampeded. His worries were unfounded, however. He stumbled across one on his way through and all it did was huff, slap its tail, and continue to munch on foliage. Sock pretended to sit on its back and laughed as Jonathan made his way past. Nothing was quite as funny as tortoise-Jonathan wide eyed with fear.

So began Jonathan’s mission to find something that would dig at him. Sock was delighted by the sudden ornery banter. It was tit for tat, blow for blow. Each hit and miss seemed only to heighten Jonathan’s need for returns.

“I would have my hands around your neck if I could.”

“You don't strike me as so vengeful.”

“Oh, but you are special, shade.”

“You flatter me.”

Jonathan hacked at the loose dirt with the seax to prepare a fire. Sock alighted upon the ground across the shallow hole with a smug expression. The ambient gray was growing black and they sat in an open space between a hedge. The mountains were not far now, they sprouted on the horizon every day. Excitement was in the air and even though Jonathan wouldn’t admit to it, Sock saw fresh energy twitch beneath his skin and knew he wasn’t alone in anticipation.

Then came the night, and neither slept. Sock had no inclination and Jonathan simply gazed into his blade. The firelight cast wild shadows and Sock plucked at their edges, molded shapes and pressed them flat, amused himself with tweaking Jonathan’s ghostly outline, giving it an auroch's horns. His hands left the shades and they flowed back into their flickering forms. They were yet tethered to this plane.

Gray days passed with no shades but Sock and no wildlife in sight. It was well and truly a rain-starved plain they traversed now. Riverbeds presented all the challenge of an empty ditch and Jonathan took breaks to calm his churning stomach. He survived on his bag of ration pellets, which Sock remarked looked worse than rabbit skrúd, but would not touch the drink jokingly gifted by Svend.

“There was a mire…”

Sock floated low above the ground, squinting at the dry, spongy mass as though it would bring answers into sight. Jonathan’s caked toes shuffled into his sight and he raised his eyes with a shrug and a sigh. It was unrecognizable.

“It’s all different with the water fled.”

Jonathan scratched the back of his neck with a considering grimace. He hadn’t bathed and toted his weight in dirt splattered clothes and skin. As he crouched to better examine the ground it cracked and peeled off his breeks and landed like leaves in the coarse grass.

"At least the mire will not swallow me if I step wrong. We shall choose a direction and take it. This might be Lady Luck in disguise."

"I did not know you were capable of such optimism."

"Even the least of leaves needs a ray occasionally."

"Is that something the Queen told you?"

Jonathan didn't reply. He straightened with another grimace and set off across the dry mire. Sock watched the leaves from his breeks crack into pieces under the wind's assault, saw dark veins of blood laced through pale dust.

A heavy sigh.

He merely wanted to move on. Certainly his story was over. It seemed as though Jonathan's had only just begun.

 

* * *

"Tell me about the Queen, Jonathan."

They were settled for the night. A small fire gathered their shadows together. Bushes came alive in the slight wind. Sock missed its touch. Of course he had Jonathan now, who hunched around his knees in the dirt. But he wasn't his old friend.

"She lives in red soil, speaks with the bees. She's their queen, it was her first title: the Queen of Honey. They made her alive again. They made her something greater. Her body and soul are anchored to the earth. No matter what the moorsmen try," he muttered, "they couldn't rid this realm of her."

"Why did the bees bring her back?"

"I guess they liked something about her."

"Just like you."

Jonathan watched his gentle smile and nodded. Just like him.

"She has a creed: she will not be responsible for death. It's honorable, but... in truth I think she's afraid. It's something she's so closely acquainted with, but not fully. Sometimes she would cry, the rain would not stop..."

Sock propped himself up as Jonathan trailed off. He couldn't cut off there. "But you were friends. You helped her."

Jonathan kept his chin on his knees and his eyes in the fire.

"Jonathan?"

"She only liked me because I am a Harja. As I've said, I'm not the ideal companion. When I was young I was bearable, but I'm not like that anymore."

Sock wasn’t so sure.

"Stories can be told with shadows," Jonathan began. "This story... is not so much one I wish to tell. But I can show you." He extended a hand. "Do you want to see?"

Sock offered his incorporeal appendage. Their meeting was miraculous. Then the story began.

The obvious flew by like dust in the wind. Tune the Stupid's simple wish to share. A great bloody eye in the sky, impassive in the face of his demise. The Harja's decline. They arrived at the the abandoned longhouse, only it wasn't abandoned. People filtered through, transient as smoke. Baskets full of berries and meat and wool. Warm fires and loud chatter. A little Jonathan appeared. People withered and vanished.

His mother spun him around and his father ruffled his hair. She withered too. There was only little Jonathan and his father left. The longhouse was abandoned.

"Disease swept my kin," Jonathan explained. "The moorsmen possessed vital herbs, but they refused to help. Most of my family was gone by the time I was born. I remember little about my mother. It was just my father and I. And..."

A tiny shack grew inside the wood. They sat outside, Jonathan plucking leaves off berries with clumsy little hands and his father showing him where. The trees rustled, and the Queen stepped into their midst, catching Jonathan's flying embrace.

"And the Queen..."

They built pyres. Saw off family with faces carved of stone. The Queen held Jonathan's hand, honey eyes shining with firelight. She mourned them all.

The moorsmen grew bold in the absence of Harjas. In an attempt to weaken them further, they chopped the shack out of the wood, forced the tree line to recede around the last pair of kin. There was nothing they could do.

His father began to wither. Jonathan was not so little and with his new age he tried his best. Believed the best, as Sock did. Cleaned the blood off his father's chin and administered the herbs they had. Held his hands and his face when he said goodbye.

"I'll greet your mother," he said. "Tell her you've made us proud."

He passed silently. Jonathan was silent too.

The woods ceased to part. His father's pyre had finished and he was buried with his mother, yet the Queen had not arrived for the funeral. Where was she when he needed her most? How could she abandon him?

Branches fell under the force of his father's seax, but it was as though the wood fought his entrance. Vines and wood stretched thick and unyielding against his ragged onslaught. His hand slipped up the grip and onto the blade. He barely noticed the blood.

His frantic knocking finally brought about results. Two eyes, reflective like a cat's, then she slowly emerged from the branches, placing a hand on his blade to lower it.

"You have injured yourself."

"Where were you?" he panted. "My father is dead."

"This I know."

"You didn't bid him farewell."

Her eyes lowered to the ground as though she didn't wish to see his shattered face. The weight of her hand left his sword and she drew into the wood's shadow.

"My own guardians do not experience passing as I do. They are not of this realm. Time is foreign and they could never understand. They do not know what it is like to watch it all pass away. They do not know what it does to me. They do not know, and I do not fault them for it. I have become bitter. It is best I no longer share my world with the fold who are smoke in my grasp. I will stay in the wood.”

Clouds tugged across the sun, her form darkened between the branches until the only indication of her presence were two discs of luminescent gold amongst pinpricks of light. Jonathan panted as panic swelled. Blood dripped from his palms as he made fists at his side, unsure if the violence was directed at her calm voice or the wild heart he wished to beat into submission.

“What of the Harjas? What of me?”

“You are the last."

“So you would leave me?"

The discs dimmed. The answer was there, in the years they reflected, in the names they remembered, in the loves they had lost. He was no different, just another blister to pop. A faceless Harja. A single sheep among the flock. She did not see Jonathan, she saw everyone before him.

"Fare you well.”

The stars winked out of existence and the discs narrowed to bleeding crescents. Then they faded.

He was alone.

 

* * *

They met the foot of the mountain ragged as forgotten banners. It was a beast up close, kin to the giants of legend. Coarse and sheer. Unwelcoming. Jonathan remarked at their similarities. There was a minute grin as Sock laughed.

He directed the shepherd to the right paths, sometimes offering encouragement and force. Jonathan's footing was surer than his, yet his strength had been spent on the journey there. Their breaks were constant despite the emphasis on wide trader trails. Quicker paths required more cunning and muscle, neither of which Jonathan had much to spare. Sock wondered if it was all lowlanders who were so weak or just the one he received.

Three nights on the slopes and they neared Sock's home. He swelled with excitement, pausing often to point out carvings in the rock, or fondly remembered formations, or paths leading to gardens or mines or practice fields. There was a large chunk off a cliff that had fallen when he was young. And here, a deep rut from a wayward tool. Tiny graffitis born of bored children, and markers meant to show the way.

Jonathan nodded and took a seat.

The village was closer now than it had ever been. Jonathan's pace faltered little, but Sock's initial excitement fell to anxiety. He found his face in his hands and his grip on his stomach. What was it like now? How would they react?

"I'm sure they will be fond to you," he told Jonathan.

"I'm sure," he told himself.

He remembered the animal fear.

 

* * *

Their arrival was met with no fanfare, only dust. The gates were wide open and the streets were bare. Houses were wind-scoured. Fire pits mere dips in the ground. Empty. His chest ached.

Sock trailed after Jonathan as he peeked around the remains of his people.

"They're all gone."

"I cannot espouse surprise," Sock admitted. "The rain stopped. We came to rely on trade, which was foolish. The water and our ties dried up. They couldn't live here anymore." The best times brought growth they could not sustain without the outside world. Once it left them, they were forced to follow.

Jonathan huffed in the dry air and shrugged. None of this was new.

"And where are you?"

Sock hesitated, then shared a shrug of his own. There was nothing left to lose.

"To the tombs."

Down another path, they passed out of the ghost village and to a deep entrance into the mountain. The border was carved in patterns reminiscent of the night sky, cradling the sun and moon at opposite points. Wind whistled across sharp vertical chips in the stone. He had always wondered if the sound was a song or a scream.

Jonathan seemed reluctant to enter.

"It's very close. Dark."

"If nothing has changed I should not be very far in. I'll refresh my memory."

He watched Jonathan take a seat with a frown and gave a reassuring quirk of the lips. Then he entered. The hall was nothing special, blank rock and a gentle slope of a floor strewn with dunes of undisturbed dust. He passed himself. There was something more important inside.

The hall took a sharp turn to the left and branched into various rooms full of sealed shelves, organized by closest kin, an almost literal family tree. Their family plot was near the Hilmir's, for they were closely related. The Hilmir had been his mother's brother, she had been the youngest of four. Had the miraculous happened, Sock would have had the chance to be chief. The thought left a raw taste on his tongue. Champion had been bad enough.

The two shelves were exactly where they were supposed to be and exactly where he remembered. They were sealed tight with rocks covered in runes and blessings. At their base was the remnants of verdant offerings: withered flowers, woven grasses, burned husks. Sock settled before them on his knees and wished for the power to let his grief join the offerings. The people had given his parents a proper burial. They weren't trapped as he was.

He placed a tender hand over the rocks, examining the runes meant to guard and guide them to the Blaze Glade. He didn't belong there. Perhaps he was fated to remain here. Maybe he was like any of Earth's shades, fleeting and vapid. Maybe it was what he deserved.

He remained with the dead, head bowed, thoughts athunder, eaten by the stifled silence of tombs. Noise gradually filtered down the hall, a voice. Jonathan was worried. Sock squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't keep the shepherd waiting.

"Not far down?" Jonathan queried once he returned. A pile of wood had already grown past his knees. Had he truly been gone so long?

Sock managed a silent nod. He hadn't spared his body much more than a glance, but it was there. The people hadn't buried him.

The entrance screamed.

"I'm assuming a pyre. And a place inside the tomb?"

Sock rubbed an elbow. "You have no means to fulfill every requirement. The bare minimum is the burning."

Jonathan shuffled, looking to the dust for courage. Without watery sunlight he would be groping through the dark. Sock had little trouble with vision at any time of day as a shade. He promised to offer what assistance he could. They entered.

This was it.

Locating his body in the fairly straight hall was easier than he had hoped. While they hadn't buried him, they had courteously gifted him a thin sheet, which was wrapped loosely around him. He directed Jonathan's hands to its edges, careful not to mention the state he was in. The stability of Jonathan's will had yet to be confirmed. He hoped the shepherd had a strong stomach.

Jonathan managed to drag the bundle with minimal unwrapping out into the light. Sock remained behind him, wary of what he might express at the sight of him, but Jonathan just arranged the wrappings tighter, binding up an arm and loose clothing. He slowed to a stop as he finished. Sock tensed.

"You wear purple," he said. A rich, royal color.

"We were the Hilmir's kin."

Jonathan nodded, slumping slightly with exhaustion.

The pyre was arranged and the bundle nestled inside. Jonathan rummaged through his sack and emerged with a handful of salt and sugar crystals, as well as a blessing stone, a palm-sized rock engraved and smoothed by worried fingers. A good luck charm.

"That will not be necessary."

"It's not as though you could stop me," Jonathan challenged.

He slipped the small offering inside and drew his blade. A few scrapes of stone and metal yielded sparks, which he blew into flame. It caught quickly to the rain-starved materials and as the sun set the pyre was truly alive. Jonathan sat on the ground nearby and Sock joined him to watch, floating cross-legged.

Neither noticed as Sock began to fade, not as with a shadow into the night, but as the dark into morning. It wasn't until too late that he thought to question Jonathan's hunched posture and scrunched face. He worried it was some sort of grief, reached out of habit, and noticed a dark stain at his side. There wasn't a chance to open his mouth. Gravity decided to work again.

 

* * *

He hit the ground hard, stunned if only by the sensation of something he could touch. The stain on Jonathan's side was still in his eyes, a splash of maroon against a beige tunic like spilled wine. His companion hadn't mentioned any injury. Sock regretted being so self-absorbed. He should have noticed.

A hand emerged out of the dark place he was in, soon followed by a greeting.

"Welcome to Hell. Need a hand?"

"Yes, thank you, sir."

He was pulled upright and into a white room furnished with weird tables and cabinets, one that stretched beyond his sight. The man who assisted him appeared completely at ease in the abnormal space, but then again, he was robed in an odd pair of tunic and breeks, sharp at the edges, purple that faded to black. He stood out against the white like the moon's light in the night sky.

Sock shuffled, uncomfortable with the perfect shapes and pure white. No such thing was possible. Of course he didn't know what to expect of any afterlife, but this was more alien than he could imagine.

"Hel," that's where the man said he was. "You mean the Lunar Vale?"

"It's got names enough to fill a book," he replied. "Whichever one works for you."

"Hel," Sock said again, tasting the name. "And who are you?"

"I'm Mephistopheles. You might know me as the Monarch of Night, among other things."

Sock nodded. He was familiar with that name. Legend told of the Monarch of Day and the Monarch of Night, each in charge of the sun or the moon, the Blaze Glade or the Lunar Vale. Lady Luck was of the sun, while Master Misfortune of the moon. They chased each other across the sky but met only during an eclipse. The Queen of Honey and Stars herded the stars through night, it was said. She was their daughter, though not by blood.

"You aren't as fearsome as I was told to expect."

"Don't trust every story you've been told," Mephistopheles grumbled. "Now, I have an offer for you."

Sock took a seat in an odd chair and listened to the equally odd god's proposal, which was simple and vaguely suspicious.

"You desire Jonathan's presence here? He isn't dead."

"He will be," Mephistopheles assured. Of course, all men were destined to perish. "You need to convince him to come here, not the Blaze Glade."

"Might I know why?"

"You've met the reason. She's very fond of bees."

He agreed to the task and found himself back by the pyre and screaming tomb. The remnants of the blaze were buried in stones and a tentative formation of twigs into runes sat atop. Jonathan didn't have to, but he did.

The shepherd was nowhere to be found. Head full of remembered worry about the stain at his side, he scoured the tombs and the paths and the village. If he was injured he couldn't have made it far. Sock didn't know how much time had passed since he entered and exited the Lunar Vale, but presently the sun hung low in the sky, moon poised to give chase. He took to the trader trails again, believing the best. He could find him before nightfall. Jonathan didn't have to be alone for long.

He almost passed him down one of the trails. The mossy cloak blended in with a single bony tree and he didn't move or make known his presence. Luck lent Sock's vision to the base of the tree. He noticed the familiar hunched form and took a breath of relief. It was short lived.

“You’re back,” Jonathan panted. “Didn’t the pyre work?”

“It worked,” Sock assured.

Coppery soot wafted across his tongue as he cautiously approached the shivering boy curled in the trees roots. Jonathan’s waxy skin gleamed like polished marble, veins stark black thread taught in his flesh. Hooded eyes, cloudy and red, groped to find focus between a stringy fringe.

“You’re not well.”

His chin fell, eyes shut tight around a hiss of pain.

“No.”

Clutched beneath his left hand was the uncorked skin of the beer Svend had forced upon him. The lip dripped slightly into a stain that spread across the stone and onto his furs, as though he had dropped it suddenly and hadn’t the strength to retrieve it. Something dark and wet clotted his left side, which he curled his entire being over and gripped with his right shaking hand.

A magpie silently landed on his shoulder. Its black feathers gleamed iridescent purples and greens even in the watery daylight.

“ _Fara_ , _fara_ …” Jon shooed it away with a twitch of his head. “I’m not beast fodder yet.”

The shining magpie paid him no heed and cawed again, snatching at a few hairs.

Jonathan heaved a sigh and lolled his head like he didn’t care that the scavengers were already staking him out. There didn’t seem enough energy left in him to deal with it.

Sock reached for the dark spot, ignoring Jonathan’s weak slitted glare. His hand merely passed through the spot, but he could see from close up that it was an ugly festering wound, the flesh ground nearly into mush and clotting with old blood and raw pus. At first he had questioned why someone living would call for the attention of the Monarch of Night, but given Jonathan’s state there was no doubt he had little time left.

“You’re requested in the Lunar Vale.”

“Of course…”

“Why?”

There was a reply, choked and stifled. It didn’t make it out Jonathan’s throat. Sock bent with caution and caught some. Lil?

“What?”

Beady little eyes blinked at Sock. The magpie chattered in his direction, hopping along Jonathan’s still shoulder.

“Jonathan?”

No answer.

The swart air stilled and the ambient noises of clattering rock and whispering wind hushed to silence. It was as though the breath of the mountain had vanished with Jonathan’s life. Sock wavered in the stillness, stomach swimming with hesitance. He wasn’t sure how to proceed from here. There was no one to burn Jonathan’s body. He would be stuck on the mortal plane without the proper burial rites, like Sock had been.

He nestled into the hollow Jonathan’s body created against the tree and waited.

What was Lil?


End file.
